"Beautiful Dreamer" by Stephen Foster - YouTube "Beautiful Dreamer" by Stephen Foster Want to watch this again later? Sign in to add this video to a playlist. Need to report the video? Sign in to report inappropriate content. Rating is available when the video has been rented. This feature is not available right now. Please try again later. Uploaded on Mar 7, 2010 One of Stephen Foster's most beautiful serenades, this piece was published posthumously, in 1864. It is sung here by Jonathan Guyot Smith, and it's available on a new CD, "Stephen Foster Melodies and Serenades for the American Parlor," with 18 Stephen Foster songs and a 12-page booklet. - About "Beautiful Dreamer" (Library of Congress) About "Beautiful Dreamer" || "Beautiful Dreamer" (1864) || Composed late in his life and published posthumously, Stephen Foster’s "Beautiful Dreamer" (1864) is one of the composer’s most memorable ballads.

It was written at least six months before Foster’s death, when he was destitute and in poor heath, and survived by selling songs (at extremely cheap rates) that were written in haste. While prolific in number, these last songs, for the most part, were less inspired than his earlier efforts, such as "Oh! Susanna", which had launched his career as a songwriter. For his songs composed after 1860, Foster turned his creative energy to the parlor ballad, a type of song noted for its sentimental or narrative text, frequently at a slow tempo. The subjects of Foster’s ballads were relatively free from minstrel-song influences and centered on topics devoid of southern themes, such as mother, love, and home. With its lilting triplet rhythm, "Beautiful Dreamer" exemplifies Foster’s final sentiments and has become one of America’s most beloved serenades. || About Stephen Collins Foster (1826-1864) || Regarded as one of America’s principal and most influential songwriters, it is fitting that Stephen Foster shares his birthday with that of the nation.

Born on July 4, 1826, in Lawrenceville, Pennsylvania, near Pittsburgh, Foster revealed an early interest in music but received little formal training. Primarily self-taught, Foster displayed an affinity for “Ethiopian” and minstrel songs (he performed in minstrel shows as a boy), yet he also incorporated characteristics of Irish melodies, German songs, and Italian operas in his compositions. He was eighteen when "Open Thy Lattice, Love" (1844), set to a poem by George P. Morris, was published; however, the title page of his first publication erroneously credited the composer as "L.C. Foster." Subsequently, Foster served as both composer and lyricist to his songs, which numbered over two hundred. Some of Foster’s earliest songs were modeled on those he heard performed in minstrel shows. His first big hit, "Oh! Susanna" (1847), which launched Foster’s career as a songwriter, became a favorite with minstrel troupes. The song also became associated with the California Gold Rush of 1849, as the forty-niners accepted a parodied version as the unofficial anthem.

In 1850, Foster composed "De Camptown Races", which was introduced by the Christy Minstrels (founded by Edwin P. Christy), the most famous minstrel troupe of the day. Like "Susanna", "De Camptown Races" was also used by the forty-niners en route to California in a parody entitled Sacramento. On July 22, 1850, Foster married Jane Denny McDowell; their daughter Marion was born nearly one year later. Foster’s romantic ballad, "Jeannie with the Light Brown Hair" (1854), is perhaps the most famous of the songs he composed for his bride. In 1851, Foster sent Christy a sentimental song, "Old Folks at Home", more commonly known as "Swanee River". By November 1854, the song had sold over 130,000 copies, making it one of Foster’s most popular and successful compositions. The song’s position in history was solidified when it became the official state song of Florida in 1935.

Another of Foster’s melodies, "My Old Kentucky Home" (1853), was also adopted as an official state anthem. Foster’s only melody to be inspired by his actual visit to the state, it became Kentucky’s state song in 1928. Even though by 1853 Foster had an exclusive contract with music publisher Firth, Pond, and Company, his financial situation became unstable, due in part to the lack of copyright protection on his songs. His personal life also suffered, and after numerous conflicts with his wife, the couple separated in 1854. Burdened with the loss of his parents the following year, as well as with his declining health and his alcoholism, the quality of Foster’s creative output greatly diminished. In the 1860s, he focused on sentimental ballads rather than minstrel songs, and of the many songs penned during his last years, only "Beautiful Dreamer" (1864) has achieved the status of his earlier works. Although penniless when he died on January 10, 1864, Foster bestowed on America a rich legacy of memorable songs.

Beautiful Dreamer, Stephen Foster, America's First Folk Song Writer Beautiful Dreamer, Stephen Foster, America's First Folk Song Writer By Garry Gamber | Submitted On March 06, 2005 1 "Beautiful Dreamer" was written by Stephen Foster just before his death in 1864 at age 37. The song became one of his most famous and most popular. However, as with the approximately 200 other songs that Foster wrote during his brief lifetime, he did not receive the recognition or financial reward that he deserved. Stephen Foster was America's first great songwriter, yet he died with 38 cents in a leather poke and a scrap of paper on which he had written a bit of song lyric, "dear friends and gentle hearts." Stephen Collins Foster was born near Pittsburgh on July 4, 1826, the same day that both Thomas Jefferson and John Adams died. Foster died in 1864 when he suffered a fall at home while weak from fever. The fall cut open his head and he died in New York's Bellevue Hospital shortly thereafter. Foster had been suffering from alcoholism for years prior to his accidental death.

Young Stephen was able to play tunes on the guitar at age two, and at age ten he performed popular comic songs with local boys. By age 18 he wrote blackface minstrel songs which were the popular folk music of the day. At age 21 he composed the minstrel song, "Oh! Susanna," which became a hit, resung, repeated, and whistled across the country. In fact it became the unofficial anthem of the California Gold Rush two years later. Music publication was in its infancy in those days and music recording didn't even exist. Stephen Foster did not receive royalties or fees for the many publications or arrangements of "Oh! Susanna" over the next few years. Indeed, he gave away the rights to the song and never received a penny for it. Over the next ten years Foster wrote many songs, including "The Swanee River (Old Folks at Home)," "Camptown Races," "Jeannie With the Light Brown Hair," "Old Black Joe," "Nelly Bly," "Old Dog Tray," and "My Old Kentucky Home." Stephen Foster earned a little money by selling his songs outright, some for as little as one dollar.

It's been said that his songwriting earned him about $20,000 during the 15 or so years of his songwriting career. In 1935 Florida adopted "The Swanee River" as the official state song, though Stephen Foster never visited Florida nor saw the river. He chose "Swanee" because the two syllables fit the music he had written. Foster sold E.P.Christy of the "Christy Minstrels," a blackface minstrel show troupe, the authorship rights to "The Swanee River," a regrettable decision. The song became a popular international folk tune and has been credited with starting the tourist industry in Florida. Beginning in the 1880's millions of people traveled to Florida to view the famous northern Florida river. In 1928 Kentucky adopted "My Old Kentucky Home" as their official state song. In 1986 Kentucky changed the second line of the song, "'Tis summer, the darkies are gay;" to "'Tis summer, the people are gay;" for obvious reasons.

Because of the popularity of "My Old Kentucky Home" and "The Swanee River," many people have the impression that Stephen Foster was a southern gentleman. However, he visited the South on only one occasion, a steamboat trip to New Orleans in 1852. Stephen Foster spent his life mostly in Pennsylvania and New York. His father, William Foster Sr., spent many years in politics, working for President Harrison and winning election to two terms as mayor of Allegheny, Pa. Prior to the Civil War Stephen Foster helped James Buchanan become President by becoming the musical director of the Buchanan Glee Club and by writing musical pieces for the campaign effort. During the Civil War Stephen Foster wrote about 70 songs, mostly patriotic war songs which sold poorly. During the war Foster's alcoholism deteriorated his health until his poverty-stricken death in 1864. Two months after his death, Stephen Foster's "Beautiful Dreamer" was published in New York. Beautiful Dreamer by Stephen Foster Beautiful dreamer, wake unto me, Starlight and dewdrops are waiting for thee; Sounds of the rude world heard in the day, Lull'd by the moonlight have all pass'd away!

Beautiful dreamer, queen of my song, List while I woo thee with soft melody; Gone are the cares of life's busy throng, -- Beautiful dreamer, awake unto me! Beautiful dreamer, out on the sea Mermaids are chaunting the wild lorelie; Over the streamlet vapors are borne, Waiting to fade at the bright coming morn. Beautiful dreamer, beam on my heart, E'en as the morn on the streamlet and sea; Then will all clouds of sorrow depart, -- Beautiful dreamer, awake unto me! ***************************** Garry Gamber is a public school teacher and entrepreneur. He writes articles about real estate, health and nutrition, and internet dating services. He is the owner of and [ Beautiful Dreamer: The Songs of Stephen Foster - Various Artists | Songs, Reviews, Credits | AllMusic Beautiful Dreamer: The Songs of Stephen Foster AllMusic Rating google+ AllMusic Review by Steve Leggett If ideas move forward on the shoulders of giants, and that is certainly true in the world of American pop music, then Stephen Foster 's shoulders are the ones at the bottom of the heap, because he is the first truly American songwriter.

Drawing both from the transplanted song traditions of the European émigrés and the rhythmic sophistication of African-American spirituals and folk pieces, Foster cobbled together a truly multicultural base for popular American music in the 1840s, turning out such enduring compositions as "Beautiful Dreamer," "Camptown Races," "Old Folks at Home" (probably best known as "Swanee River"), "Jeanie With the Light Brown Hair," "Oh! Susanna," and "Old Kentucky Home," pieces that dressed up aspects of the frequently risqué and racist minstrel tradition in fine new clothes (with the offensive parts thankfully excised). Foster was also the first American songwriter to get royally fleeced by the music business, and he died in 1864 with only 38 cents to his name, a forgotten resident of the Bowery. Foster was the founder of the pop music you hear on your car radio, whether it's jazz, country, rock, or rap, because all of these forms draw on the cross-thatching of traditions that Foster first joined into a single stream of American music nearly 150 years ago.

This interesting collection of Foster songs by an assortment of country, folk, and pop performers points out how versatile (and how exceedingly lovely) these pieces continue to be. A song like "Don't Bet Money on the Shanghai," done here by BR5-49 , even exhibits eerie postmodern sensibilities, right down to its hard-to-pin-down ironic tone, and one could easily imagine Randy Newman having written it. A version here of the often-maligned "Camptown Races" (just remember the rendition in the movie Blazing Saddles) by the Duhks restores its inherent polyrhythmic richness, while Mavis Staples brings gospel wisdom to the elegantly sad and hopeful "Hard Times Come Again No More." Roger McGuinn turns "Jeanie With the Light Brown Hair" into a lost Byrds ' classic, and it is interesting to recall that the Byrds recorded Foster 's "Oh! Susanna" for their second album in 1966.

Foster 's songs have all too often been viewed through the lens of nostalgia (a device Foster deliberately employed and willingly exploited), but their deceptively simple melodies and rich cultural histories full of merging rhythms from different continents make them a good deal more than that, not only the first true American songs, but also among the best. Their amazing longevity proves the point, because in pop music nothing survives without utility. Track Listing America's first professional songwriter, Stephen Foster Lydia Hutchinson | January 13, 2015 | 4 Comments He was America’s first professional songwriter. He was also the first songwriter to be unfairly exploited by music publishers. Although his songs never generated the fortune Stephen Foster deserved during his brief life span, many of them, such as “Oh! Susanna,” “Old Kentucky Home,” “Jeanie with the Light Brown Hair” and “Old Folks at Home,” have resonated through the generations. They are the essence of Americana, as fundamental and timeless a part of the American identity as The Gettysburg Address and Huckleberry Finn, so ingrained into our collective consciousness that many are considered today to be folk songs, as if they were born with the earth, and not the creation of an actual songwriter.

Born prior to the Civil War, Foster was in the music business before that business really existed in this country. There was certainly no record industry—sound recording wasn’t even invented until more than a decade past his death, and radio didn’t arrive for 66 years after that. There was no modern music publishing business, and no organizations to collect performance royalties. The only way he could earn any income from songwriting was by selling editions of his own sheet music to a publisher, for which he would receive scant royalties, or by simply selling a song outright for a small fee, thus forever relinquishing all of its rights. Had Foster worked within the modern system, he would have made many millions. Instead, he died at the age of 37 with only 38 cents in his pocket. “Hard Times”: Mavis Staples recording for Beautiful Dreamer: The Songs of Stephen Foster, 2004 Foster’s life belongs to history now, and, as such, its facts tend to shift depending on who is relating it. Born on the 4th of July in 1826, innumerable myths about him which have been perpetuated through the ages have only been dispelled in recent years.

It’s often assumed he was a Southerner, for example, because he wrote about the Swanee River and an old Kentucky home. In fact, he was born and raised in Lawrenceville, Pa, just outside of Pittsburgh. It’s been said he was uneducated, which is also untrue. Since he grew up before the advent of public education, he attended private school and was also privately tutored. It’s been said he was musically gifted but untrained and illiterate. This is far from the truth—he learned how to read, write and arrange music at an early age. Foster’s father was a politician and businessman whose hapless real estate speculations led the family to the brink of financial ruin. But Foster’s childhood seemed to be a mostly happy one. As a teenager he joined a club along with his brother Morrison and his good friend Charles Shiras called the Knights of the S.T., which would meet periodically at the Foster home. The only available music, of course, was that which people made themselves, and the boys used to sing popular tunes of the day together, with Stephen always in the lead. He started composing his own songs for the group, and it’s commonly believed that “Oh!

Susanna” was among the first that he wrote. At 18 his first song was published—which literally meant “published” in those days—as sheet music. It was called “Open Thy Lattice Love.” He went to college, but dropped out after a week. He hoped to make a living from songwriting, but it was impossible. Royalties generated from the sales of sheet music then was nowhere near what he needed to live on. So at the age of 20 he moved to Cincinnati to get a “real job,” accepting his brother Dunning’s offer to work as a bookkeeper for his steamship firm. Foster never stopped writing songs, however, and maintained his vision of someday making his living from songwriting alone. He succeeded in selling some of the new songs and instrumental piano pieces to a local publisher in Cincinnati, one of which was “Oh! Susanna.” “Oh! Susanna” performed by James Taylor and Johnny Cash, 1971 He surmised that the best way to expose his songs to the largest possible audience was to get them into the minstrel shows circulating through the country.

Instead of handing out taped demos as would a modern songwriter, Foster instead distributed sheet music of his songs to various minstrel shows as they passed through town. One of the most popular of these, the original Christy Minstrels, adopted “Oh! Susanna” as their theme song in 1848, and it soon became a hit song throughout the still-new nation even in those days long before radio. But rather than earn Foster much income, the song was essentially bootlegged by many different music publishers, who sold the sheet music to the public and cashed in on its popularity without compensating the songwriter at all. They earned tens of thousands of dollars on the song, while he earned only a single payment of $100 from a Cincinnati publishing firm. In this way, he is notable for not only being America’s first professional songwriter, but also for being America’s first professional songwriter to be exploited and cheated at the hands of unscrupulous businessmen. This taught him an important lesson, however—that there was a lot of money that could be made in songwriting if he was able to protect his songs. It wasn’t easy to do, though, as existing copyright laws offered flimsy authorship protection.

By 1849 he’d landed eight different songs in minstrel shows, including “Uncle Ned,” and “Nelly Was a Lady.” Though it was unprecedented, he felt he could make his living entirely by writing and publishing songs, and returned to Pittsburgh with that goal. In December of 1849 he signed on with one of the few reputable music publishers then in business, Firth, Pond, & Co., and dedicated himself to the life of a professional songwriter. The following year he married Jane Denny McDowell, with whom he had one child, a daughter named Marion, born later that year. Though his success up to that point consisted of writing minstrel songs in black dialect, he aspired to write a more serious, universal kind of song. “Nelly Is A Lady,” written in 1849, was the first of his songs to break away from the common caricatures of black culture which he had help to promulgate. Both “Angelina Baker” and “Ring, Ring De Banjo,” written in 1851, expressed a new level of human compassion for the lives of slaves on a plantation.

Rather than be portrayed as objects of ridicule, they became instead symbols of perseverance. He also wrote one of his most famous songs ever, “Old Folks At Home,” which, despite its use of the word “darkies,” did something no previous song had done: It showed the humanity of blacks longing for a return to the comforts of home and family. “Old Folks at Home” – Deanna Durbin Foster tried to persuade Christy that his minstrel show could perform a new kind of song, one that could appeal to all people and not only those who enjoy the use of “trashy and really offensive words.” He insisted that these new songs should not be performed comically, but in a “pathetic,” humane style. His lyrics, which had always been graceful, took on a new, almost Shakespearean elegance, and he started writing songs he felt were suitable to the parlor—where proper, refined men and women would sit around the piano and play the tunes of the day. In direct contradiction to the myth that he was an unschooled, street-level musician, Foster composed a surprising amount of instrumental music during his lifetime.

In 1854 he completed a massive project called The Social Orchestra, an arrangement for flute, violin, piano and other instruments of some 73 different pieces combined, including his own music as well as music written by Mozart, Schubert and others. It sold well, and, as he had hoped, became a popular item for informal piano gatherings. But the amount of time and energy he devoted to it far exceeded any income it generated, which amounted only to a one-time fee of $150. As could be expected, after its completion he returned to writing songs. Randy Newman ’s 1970 song referencing Foster’s “My Old Kentucky Home” By 1860 with the Civil War unstoppable on the horizon, Foster hit his lowest lows, struggling to write new songs as he sadly saw the division of his homeland into separate nations. With the hope of reviving his career, he returned to writing minstrel songs, which he now called “plantation songs.” He moved with his family that year to New York, but was soon alone again, living in a hotel in the theater district of Manhattan as his wife and daughter moved back to Pennsylvania.

Unable to get a new writing contract, he had no choice but to accept the lowly amounts offered by publishers for the complete rights to his new songs. He embarked on the first and only songwriting collaboration of his career in 1862 with the poet George Cooper, who wrote comic lyrics Foster felt were commercial enough to appeal to musical theater fans. They also wrote a couple of songs tailored specifically for the Civil War, including “Willie Has Gone to War.” None of the new songs could touch the ongoing popularity of his early songs, however, which remained beloved in both the North and the South throughout the war. He also tried his hand at writing sacred songs intended for children, contributing the beautiful “Give Us This Day Our Daily Bread” and other songs to a Sunday school songbook. Though he wrote more than 100 songs during his final years, most of them remained unpublished and are lost forever. The haunting “Beautiful Dreamer,” which he wrote in 1862, was found and published posthumously in 1864. “Beautiful Dreamer” – Beatles’ Adapted Version He died in New York City on January 13, 1864.

He’d been ill for days in his hotel room when he tried to get out of bed and fell against the washbasin, splitting open his head. Several hours passed before he was brought to the Welfare Island hospital, coincidentally the same institution where another legendary American songwriter, Jerome Kern, would die in 1945. Antibiotics and transfusions were unknown in Foster’s time, and he died after three days, leaving behind only the pennies in his pocket and a mysterious but poetic message scrawled in pencil: “Dear friends and gentle hearts.” He was 37 years old. It’s been estimated that during Foster’s lifetime he earned just over fifteen thousand dollars in royalties on sheet music from his entire catalog of songs, and no income at all from performance royalties. His wife and daughter earned a total of $4,199 after his death. Today even one hit with the national magnitude of “Oh Susanna” would earn millions annually, and Foster wrote many. Today, however, like the traditional folk songs people think they are, the songs of Stephen Foster are all in the public domain.

—By Paul Zollo The Music of Stephen Collins Foster (1826-1864) The Music of Stephen Collins Foster (1826-1864) Stephen Collins Foster (born 4 Jul 1826; died 13 Jan 1864) was the son of William Barcley Foster (born: 7 Sep 1779; died 27 Jul 1855) and Elisa Clayland [Tomlinson] Foster (born: Jan 1788; died Jan 1855) who were married in 1807. He had three sisters (Charlotte Susanna, Ann Eliza, and Henrietta) and four brothers (James [who died in infancy], Dunning McNair, Morrison and William). In 1850, he married Jane Denny McDowell. Among his most popular songs are: Oh! Susanna (1848), De Camptown Races (1850), Old Folks at Home [aka Swanee River] (1851), My Old Kentucky Home, Good-Night!

(1853), Jeanie With the Light Brown Hair (1854), Gentle Annie (1856), Beautiful Dreamer (1862), and The Voices That Are Gone (1865). The following published chronological song listing is derived from definitive information from the Center for American Music at Foster Memorial Hall of the University of Pittsburgh in Pennsylvania. My three main resources for obtaining score copies were The Music of Stephen C. Foster: A Critical Edition prepared by Steven Saunders and Dean L. Root (1990), Morrison Foster's book, published in 1896 and reprinted in 1977 by AMS Press, of Biography, Songs and Musical Compositions of Stephen C. Foster, and The Lester S. Levy Collection of Sheet Music . An excellent supplementary resource, which began my interest in this project was Stephen Foster Song Book: Original Sheet Music of 40 Songs by STEPHEN COLLINS FOSTER Selected, with an Introduction and Notes by RICHARD JACKSON, 1974, Dover Publications, ISBN 0-486-23048-1.

Title Stephen Foster on Apple Music To preview a song, mouse over the title and click Play. Open iTunes to buy and download music. Biography Stephen Foster is one of the most enduring figures in 19th century American music -- a status borne out by the fact that he and his music are still being discussed in the 21st century. In an era when even Charles K. Harris, whose "After the Ball" sold millions of copies of sheet music at the end of the 19th century and got a further boost from its inclusion in the musical Show Boat, is scarcely remembered at all, Stephen Foster still looms astonishingly large over American popular music and popular culture. His songs, including "Oh! Susanna," "Jeanie With the Light Brown Hair," "My Old Kentucky Home," "Old Folks at Home" (better known as "Swanee River," "Camptown Races," and "Beautiful Dreamer," remain among the best-known standards in American music, 150 years after they were written. Stephen Foster was the ninth child of William Barclay Foster and the former Eliza Clayland Tomlinson.

He was an indifferent student, but loved music, and he taught himself the flute, clarinet, guitar, violin, and piano. According to one account of his life, he was introduced to black church music through a household servant, who brought him to services in his community in what is now part of Pennsylvania -- there may be some truth in the contact, but his background was just as strongly rooted in European sources: English, Irish, and German. He never studied composition in any formal way, but by the age of 14 he was writing songs, and at 18 he had his first piece published. Foster entertained at social gatherings and in other informal settings but earned his living as a bookkeeper. Initially, he made his way in music with two distinctly different bodies of music, one the minstrel song, which he offered to established stage performers, and the other the more dignified parlor songs, which were intended to engage middle-class listeners, especially women, in their homes. In 1849, he latched onto a piece of popular culture immortality when he wrote "Susannah," better known today as "Oh! Susannah"; adopted spontaneously by the forty-niners and others heading West, "Oh!

Susannah" became an anthem of the era and was still identified with travel West a hundred years later. It was pieces such as this, for which he received only a very small fee from a publisher he was trying to court and the success of his minstrel songs, that got Foster his first serious publishing contract in 1849. He became a professional songwriter the following year, at around the same time that he married. He and his wife, the former Jane Denny McDowell, had one daughter. Foster was massively prolific and supremely popular -- he was the first person in the history of the United States to make a living off of sales of his compositions, though this proved to be a chaotic and uncertain living at best. For most of the early 1850s, Foster concentrated on the authorship of minstrel songs, although he also saw some potential interest in larger scale works -- in 1853, Foster published a musical play called The Invisible Prince, co-authored with a friend, writer Charles Shiras, and in January of the following year, he released the Social Orchestra, a collection of 73 melodies, of his own and also those by others, specifically presented in dance arrangements.

After 1854, Foster turned away from the authorship of minstrel songs, however, and instead concentrated on parlor ballads such as "Jeanie With the Light Brown Hair." In a time when the country was expanding and prosperous, different elements of Foster's music were accepted in all social classes -- native-born American and immigrant, rich and poor, white and black -- and sales of his songs through sheet music ran well into the hundreds of thousands and higher. His publisher, Firth, Pond & Co., were considered generous by the standards of the era, but the accounting methods of the period were dubious at best. In particular, he was vulnerable to being denied royalties for sales of his music that took place after the effective dates of his contracts. One oddity of Foster's career is that his most successful songs were those with Southern themes. This has left the impression on future generations that he was tied to the Southern, slave-owning culture of the era.

He did, in fact, earn most of his money -- as much as 90 percent of his royalty income -- from those songs, which is saying a lot given that the South was monetarily the poorest region of the country; the truth, however, was that Foster had no sympathy for the institution of slavery or the culture that supported it and also had very little direct knowledge of it. He spent most of his time in the North, around Philadelphia and Cincinnati and later, New York; he only ever took one trip, by steamboat, South of the Mason-Dixon line, in 1852, and that was on the occasion of the honeymoon that he and his wife spent in New Orleans. It simply happened that the sentimentality of his songs, which often dealt with separation from home and loved ones and feelings of nostalgia, tied in well with a peculiar element of Southern culture. Even before the Civil War, Southerners had a way of romanticizing their homes and homeland that was second to none among the different regions of the country.

Indeed, Samuel Clemens and other observers of the period blamed the emotional impetus for the Civil War -- or, at least, the South's willingness and eagerness to fire the first shot and to fight to the last man -- on that same romanticism, and that element of Foster's music struck a responsive chord in whites south of the Mason-Dixon Line, as well as those settlers from the region who headed West into new territories. Blacks also liked his music because it was not only good, but it was inoffensive by the standards of the entertainment of the day. In actual fact, Foster knew little of minstrel entertainment when he'd started out, and his music, including those minstrel songs that referred to blacks and even to slavery, often treated blacks better, with more dignity and sensitivity than was the custom of the period. Even W.E.B. Du Bois cited Foster's "Swanee River," as we now know it, and "Old Black Joe" as being different and separate from the truly racist songs of the period.

Further productions of the play Uncle Tom's Cabin, which was as inflammatory an anti-slavery work as there was during the 1850s, often used the Foster songs "My Old Kentucky Home, Good-night!" and "Old Folks at Home." The fact that Foster was a northerner mattered not at all to his white southern audience, nor did his work offend educated blacks in the same way as other minstrel songs that caricatured blacks mercilessly. One factor that is also difficult to appreciate now is that Foster kept his use of black dialect in his published minstrel songs to a minimum. And while he had anything to say about it, Foster insisted on the dignified, not burlesqued performance of his music, even when he was dealing with Edward Christy. The leader and founder of the Christy Minstrels, the most popular performing group (who often worked in blackface) of their era, Christy played a decisive role in popularizing Foster's songs, but he was forced to accede to Foster's demands. As a composer, he had that kind of clout that he could make those demands of a man in Christy's position.

Foster seemed to have the world at his feet during the early 1850s, but then his life took a series of tragic turns. In the mid-1850s, his wife took their daughter and left him; this was followed by the deaths of Shiras and both of Foster's parents. He virtually ceased writing music, publishing only two songs in the next two years, and in 1857, in an effort to pay off his debts, he sold off all rights to his existing song catalog to his publisher. He might never have written another song, had he not moved to New York City in 1860. In his desire to be near the center of theater, he found new inspiration, and he wrote 98 songs over the next three years, including parlor songs, hymns, and music hall numbers. Although his output during this second great productive period was less distinguished, it did include "Beautiful Dreamer," which was published posthumously in 1864. As with most songwriters, Foster was at the mercy of the business practices of the entertainment industry at the time, which were weighted in favor of the publisher.

In any part of the 20th century, he would have been a millionaire at least twice over, but in the 1850s, he was never compensated remotely that well. Foster never fully caught up with his debts and was always writing new songs to keep his income flowing in. He managed to sustain himself until an accident In early 1864; on January 10 of that year, while living in a hotel in New York and weakened from a previous accident in which he was burned by a lamp, Foster collapsed and struck his head. He died three days later, not yet 38 years old. He was mourned publicly from the moment of his death, as a genuine American icon and symbol -- even today, he seems like Huckleberry Finn (or, perhaps, more correctly, Tom Sawyer) re-imagined with a musical education. Within months of his death, Foster was hailed as the truest American composer of the 19th century, much as William Billings before him had embodied the musical spirit of the American Revolution; but 19th century America was a bigger, greater country than its 18th century counterpart, and his music was spread across the continent and the globe.

Singers ranging from Jenny Lind to Paul Robeson to Thomas Hampson have performed his songs, and his name and fame endured right into the age of television. Indeed, his song "Swanee River" (aka "Old Folks at Home") figured prominently in one of the most famous episodes ever done on the comedy series "The Honeymooners: The $99,000 Answer." Played throughout the episode as a running joke and finally turning up as the one song that hapless hero Ralph Kramden doesn't know, the song was the centerpiece of the program's audio props, and Foster even got his name mentioned at the denouement. More tellingly, Foster's work came to be included in the collections of American standards taught to seemingly every schoolchild in the country for most of the century after his death, and Brian Wilson and the Beach Boys saw nothing absurd about informally cutting a version of "Old Folks at Home" during one of their late-'60s sessions (which turned up on the 1990 CD of Friends/20/20).

Foster's music only began to disappear when it was caught up, unfairly, in the net of political correctness during the late '50s and 1960s, during and after the struggle for civil rights legislation. The distinctions that had made Foster's music different from other songs that came out of the background of minstrel shows were lost on modern activists and their allies in the school systems (where The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, as anti-slavery, anti-Southern culture a novel as was ever written, also came under fire from black educators and their liberal white allies), and children simply stopped learning Foster's songs after the 1960s. In more recent years, however, his songs and reputation have once again been elevated, as scholars and musicologists have gotten their views heard. That academic defense, coupled with the fact that Foster's songs are an integral part of our popular culture landscape, inescapably presented in movies and entertainment in the United States (and also familiar to listeners on five other continents), renewed the respect and appreciation of Foster's songs just in time for the opening of the 21st century.

~ Bruce Eder Top Albums Stephen Foster Bio | Stephen Foster Career | MTV Get the MTV ArtistsApp and discover music wherever you are. About Stephen Foster Blues/Folk Stephen Foster is one of the most enduring figures in 19th century American music -- a status borne out by the fact that he and his music are still being discussed in the 21st century. In an era when even Charles K. Harris, whose "After the Ball" sold millions of copies of sheet music at the end of the 19th century and got a further boost from its inclusion in the musical Show Boat, is scarcely remembered at all, Stephen Foster still looms astonishingly large over American popular music and popular culture. His songs, including "Oh! Susanna," "Jeanie With the Light Brown Hair," "My Old Kentucky Home," "Old Folks at Home" (better known as "Swanee River," "Camptown Races," and "Beautiful Dreamer," remain among the best-known standards in American music, 150 years after they were written. Stephen Foster was the ninth child of William Barclay Foster and the former Eliza Clayland Tomlinson.

He was an indifferent student, but loved music, and he taught himself the flute, clarinet, guitar, violin, and piano. According to one account of his life, he was introduced to black church music through a household servant, who brought him to services in his community in what is now part of Pennsylvania -- there may be some truth in the contact, but his background was just as strongly rooted in European sources: English, Irish, and German. He never studied composition in any formal way, but by the age of 14 he was writing songs, and at 18 he had his first piece published. Foster entertained at social gatherings and in other informal settings but earned his living as a bookkeeper. Initially, he made his way in music with two distinctly different bodies of music, one the minstrel song, which he offered to established stage performers, and the other the more dignified parlor songs, which were intended to engage middle-class listeners, especially women, in their homes. In 1849, he latched onto a piece of popular culture immortality when he wrote "Susannah," better known today as "Oh! Susannah"; adopted spontaneously by the forty-niners and others heading West, "Oh!

Susannah" became an anthem of the era and was still identified with travel West a hundred years later. It was pieces such as this, for which he received only a very small fee from a publisher he was trying to court and the success of his minstrel songs, that got Foster his first serious publishing contract in 1849. He became a professional songwriter the following year, at around the same time that he married. He and his wife, the former Jane Denny McDowell, had one daughter. Foster was massively prolific and supremely popular -- he was the first person in the history of the United States to make a living off of sales of his compositions, though this proved to be a chaotic and uncertain living at best. For most of the early 1850s, Foster concentrated on the authorship of minstrel songs, although he also saw some potential interest in larger scale works -- in 1853, Foster published a musical play called The Invisible Prince, co-authored with a friend, writer Charles Shiras, and in January of the following year, he released the Social Orchestra, a collection of 73 melodies, of his own and also those by others, specifically presented in dance arrangements.

After 1854, Foster turned away from the authorship of minstrel songs, however, and instead concentrated on parlor ballads such as "Jeanie With the Light Brown Hair." In a time when the country was expanding and prosperous, different elements of Foster's music were accepted in all social classes -- native-born American and immigrant, rich and poor, white and black -- and sales of his songs through sheet music ran well into the hundreds of thousands and higher. His publisher, Firth, Pond & Co., were considered generous by the standards of the era, but the accounting methods of the period were dubious at best. In particular, he was vulnerable to being denied royalties for sales of his music that took place after the effective dates of his contracts. One oddity of Foster's career is that his most successful songs were those with Southern themes. This has left the impression on future generations that he was tied to the Southern, slave-owning culture of the era.

He did, in fact, earn most of his money -- as much as 90 percent of his royalty income -- from those songs, which is saying a lot given that the South was monetarily the poorest region of the country; the truth, however, was that Foster had no sympathy for the institution of slavery or the culture that supported it and also had very little direct knowledge of it. He spent most of his time in the North, around Philadelphia and Cincinnati and later, New York; he only ever took one trip, by steamboat, South of the Mason-Dixon line, in 1852, and that was on the occasion of the honeymoon that he and his wife spent in New Orleans. It simply happened that the sentimentality of his songs, which often dealt with separation from home and loved ones and feelings of nostalgia, tied in well with a peculiar element of Southern culture. Even before the Civil War, Southerners had a way of romanticizing their homes and homeland that was second to none among the different regions of the country.

Indeed, Samuel Clemens and other observers of the period blamed the emotional impetus for the Civil War -- or, at least, the South's willingness and eagerness to fire the first shot and to fight to the last man -- on that same romanticism, and that element of Foster's music struck a responsive chord in whites south of the Mason-Dixon Line, as well as those settlers from the region who headed West into new territories. Blacks also liked his music because it was not only good, but it was inoffensive by the standards of the entertainment of the day. In actual fact, Foster knew little of minstrel entertainment when he'd started out, and his music, including those minstrel songs that referred to blacks and even to slavery, often treated blacks better, with more dignity and sensitivity than was the custom of the period. Even W.E.B. Du Bois cited Foster's "Swanee River," as we now know it, and "Old Black Joe" as being different and separate from the truly racist songs of the period.

Further productions of the play Uncle Tom's Cabin, which was as inflammatory an anti-slavery work as there was during the 1850s, often used the Foster songs "My Old Kentucky Home, Good-night!" and "Old Folks at Home." The fact that Foster was a northerner mattered not at all to his white southern audience, nor did his work offend educated blacks in the same way as other minstrel songs that caricatured blacks mercilessly. One factor that is also difficult to appreciate now is that Foster kept his use of black dialect in his published minstrel songs to a minimum. And while he had anything to say about it, Foster insisted on the dignified, not burlesqued performance of his music, even when he was dealing with Edward Christy. The leader and founder of the Christy Minstrels, the most popular performing group (who often worked in blackface) of their era, Christy played a decisive role in popularizing Foster's songs, but he was forced to accede to Foster's demands. As a composer, he had that kind of clout that he could make those demands of a man in Christy's position.

Foster seemed to have the world at his feet during the early 1850s, but then his life took a series of tragic turns. In the mid-1850s, his wife took their daughter and left him; this was followed by the deaths of Shiras and both of Foster's parents. He virtually ceased writing music, publishing only two songs in the next two years, and in 1857, in an effort to pay off his debts, he sold off all rights to his existing song catalog to his publisher. He might never have written another song, had he not moved to New York City in 1860. In his desire to be near the center of theater, he found new inspiration, and he wrote 98 songs over the next three years, including parlor songs, hymns, and music hall numbers. Although his output during this second great productive period was less distinguished, it did include "Beautiful Dreamer," which was published posthumously in 1864. As with most songwriters, Foster was at the mercy of the business practices of the entertainment industry at the time, which were weighted in favor of the publisher.

In any part of the 20th century, he would have been a millionaire at least twice over, but in the 1850s, he was never compensated remotely that well. Foster never fully caught up with his debts and was always writing new songs to keep his income flowing in. He managed to sustain himself until an accident In early 1864; on January 10 of that year, while living in a hotel in New York and weakened from a previous accident in which he was burned by a lamp, Foster collapsed and struck his head. He died three days later, not yet 38 years old. He was mourned publicly from the moment of his death, as a genuine American icon and symbol -- even today, he seems like Huckleberry Finn (or, perhaps, more correctly, Tom Sawyer) re-imagined with a musical education. Within months of his death, Foster was hailed as the truest American composer of the 19th century, much as William Billings before him had embodied the musical spirit of the American Revolution; but 19th century America was a bigger, greater country than its 18th century counterpart, and his music was spread across the continent and the globe.

Singers ranging from Jenny Lind to Paul Robeson to Thomas Hampson have performed his songs, and his name and fame endured right into the age of television. Indeed, his song "Swanee River" (aka "Old Folks at Home") figured prominently in one of the most famous episodes ever done on the comedy series "The Honeymooners: The $99,000 Answer." Played throughout the episode as a running joke and finally turning up as the one song that hapless hero Ralph Kramden doesn't know, the song was the centerpiece of the program's audio props, and Foster even got his name mentioned at the denouement. More tellingly, Foster's work came to be included in the collections of American standards taught to seemingly every schoolchild in the country for most of the century after his death, and Brian Wilson and the Beach Boys saw nothing absurd about informally cutting a version of "Old Folks at Home" during one of their late-'60s sessions (which turned up on the 1990 CD of Friends/20/20).

Foster's music only began to disappear when it was caught up, unfairly, in the net of political correctness during the late '50s and 1960s, during and after the struggle for civil rights legislation. The distinctions that had made Foster's music different from other songs that came out of the background of minstrel shows were lost on modern activists and their allies in the school systems (where The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, as anti-slavery, anti-Southern culture a novel as was ever written, also came under fire from black educators and their liberal white allies), and children simply stopped learning Foster's songs after the 1960s. In more recent years, however, his songs and reputation have once again been elevated, as scholars and musicologists have gotten their views heard. That academic defense, coupled with the fact that Foster's songs are an integral part of our popular culture landscape, inescapably presented in movies and entertainment in the United States (and also familiar to listeners on five other continents), renewed the respect and appreciation of Foster's songs just in time for the opening of the 21st century. ~ Bruce Eder, Rovi

Question: Who composed the songs “Old Folks at Home” and “Beautiful Dreamer”?
Answer: Stephen Foster